338 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION G. 
countries special facilities for improvement are freely offered, 
and largely availed of. 
In 1897 the 40,000 depositors in the sixteen registered rail- 
way savings banks of the United Kingdom had an average of 
£85 to their credit. 
DIscreLine. 
This is necessarily severe. The passenger or the consignor 
may miss his train time, but we cannot allow the engine-driver 
to be late at his post. 
The complex working of a railway, with its through bookings, 
its goods classification, its ordinary and special rates, its signals, 
its power brakes, its engines to keep in working condition, and 
its track and structures to maintain, gives rise to a series of 
elaborate rules which, together with the divisions of the staff, 
are calculated to provide for the efficient operation of the lines. 
THE FuTUuRE 
Railway enterprise is a matter of the last three-quarters of 
the nineteenth century. 
China is as yet practically untouched except by the ambitious 
schemes of European diplomats and financiers. Its vast territory 
and population of 400,000,000 afford correspondingly great 
opportunity for railway development. Assuming this develop- 
ment to call in the near future for the same low proportion of 
railway labour to population as India, 400,000 men will be re- 
quired to work the trains of China. 
Russia is making immense strides, and has enormous pos- 
sibilities. England and America are still adding largely to the 
railway army, and throughout the world there is perhaps a 
ereater activity in this than in any other sphere of human energy. 
The number of men employed on the railways of the United 
Kingdom has more than doubled since 1875, though the railway 
miles age has not increased one-third ; there were then fifteen men 
to the mile, there are now twenty-five. 
The possibilities of the future are evidently great. The ques- 
tion, “Is electricity to displace steam,” is, however, one on 
which much depends ; still more important is another question, 
arising from the partial success of aerial navigation, namely, 
“ Whether two parallel metals will continue to be required?” 
while they are we may expect the railways to progress. 
Meanwhile we Australians, not having the inland navigable 
waters of our American cousins, will find the railway man more 
and more necessary ; and, as we are fortunate in having well 
trained bodies of men on the railway systems of our colonies, 
we may fairly anticipate that, under the inspiration of the 
